


Season 1, Episode 3A: New Traditions

by Peaches and RAmen (Peachy00Keen)



Series: Star Trek: Babel [6]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek - Various Authors, Star Trek Online
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alcohol, Aliens, Drinking, F/F, F/M, Gen, Humans, Humor, M/M, Multi, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Other, Party, Science, Science Fiction, Slice of Life, Star Trek References, Star Trek: Babel, Tellarites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-02-23 04:50:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23505994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peachy00Keen/pseuds/Peaches%20and%20RAmen
Summary: Lieutenant Caldwell hosts several members of the senior staff for a homemade dinner and small-scale social mixer. With the addition of alcohol to help wash down the meal, conversation becomes rather lively.
Series: Star Trek: Babel [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1623328
Comments: 5
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

“I haven’t looked at sporks the same way since.” Jeremy took a sip of his minty beverage as Shannon laughed. “I feel like we all did plenty of stupid things in our spare time at the Academy.”

“I think that’s the idea,” Shannon replied, her laugh winding down enough to allow her a sip of her pink beverage that smelled faintly of crisp apples. “They hope we get most of our wild impulses out before we get our official assignments.”

“Anyone who can get those impulses completely out of their systems doesn’t sound like the kind of person I’d want to be around. Life gets boring without a bit of spontaneity.” He adjusted the bottom of his uniform shirt as he shifted his weight on the barstool.

Shannon placed her palms on the bartop. “Maybe that’s what we need.”

Jeremy raised an eyebrow and quirked a lopsided smile. “A silverware duel?”

“What? No! I mean, maybe...” Shannon laughed and shook her head. “No, I mean some kind of off-duty event for senior staff so we can just let loose and get to know one another outside of our monthly crises.”

“Oh yeah, nothing like a good old strategema tournament to really bring out our wild sides.” Jeremy took another sip of his drink. “I bet I could lose faster than you.”

Shannon swatted at his arm. “Are you always this difficult?”

“Only when it serves me.” He flashed her a charming smile. “I do think you’re onto something. Getting the senior staff together for something casual on a regular basis would likely be great for morale and interpersonal relations. Scientists aren’t exactly known for their social prowess.”

He took another sip of his drink as Lieutenant Barnes made her way through the main entryway and straight to the bar. Hob, the strange old man who managed the bar, nodded to her and reached for a large brown bottle.

“The usual?” he asked.

Jessica nodded. “And make it a double.”

“Speaking of senior staff who could probably use a break, rough shift, Lieutenant?” Shannon gave a small wave and gestured to the empty seat beside Jeremy. “Grab a seat. We were discussing plans for some kind of off duty get-together.”

“You could say that. I spent half the day trying to figure out who was stealing from the cargo bay, only to find out that the ‘missing’ supplies had been mislabeled from the start. They were there the whole time.” She downed half of her drink in one go, shook her head, and turned to face the pair of them. “What’s this about a get-together?”

“Wow,” Jeremy winced. “One more thing I didn’t realize I had to be grateful for as an anti-social science officer.”

“Oh yeah, you’re anti-social alright.” Shannon rolled her eyes at him before directing her attention to Jessica. “We were talking about doing something among the senior staff as a way to unwind and get to know each other.”

“Sure, that could be fun. Did you have anything in mind?” Jessica asked.

“Not really,” Shannon shrugged. “Jeremy isn’t much more help. He proposed a strategema tournament.”

Jessica looked to him and raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, that’s not fair! I suggested that as a joke.”

“Alright, then give me a real suggestion.”

“Well,” he paused and swirled his drink, thinking. “I could… cook something? You could both come over for dinner.” He took another sip and leveled a stare at Shannon. “For someone whose idea this supposedly is, you aren’t terribly original.”

“It’s called outsourcing. Why do you think they have me as the XO of this ship and not you?”

Jessica’s eyebrow shot up further. “You cook?”

He turned his torso toward her and folded his arms across his chest. “Yes, I can cook!” His posture loosened. “Well, by technicality I can cook. Cooking is sort of a loose term.” Jeremy reached for his drink and finished the contents of his glass. “I’m learning.”

Shannon snorted. “Consider me shocked, Caldwell. I didn’t realize you dabbled in the culinary arts.”

“Hey, don’t go getting ahead of yourself, Commander. There’s nothing artful about this unless you’re planning to bring a critique. I’m offering to host, but I’m not promising a five-star meal.” He turned his attention back to Jessica. “I am taking suggestions if you have any.”

“How are you with barbeque? I’d kill for a good brisket.”

Jeremy laughed, his enthusiasm petering out as he realized she was serious. “Yeah, let me just get clearance from the captain to replicate a smoker and I’ll get right on it.” He shook his head. “How about something simple like lasagna? Barbecue is great, but I’d rather not have to sleep in a requisitioned barracks because I charred the interior of my quarters.”

“Coward,” Jessica scowled before letting out a laugh of her own. “I suppose lasagna will do.”

“Alright, it’s settled then. I’ll make my best attempt at lasagna and see you two at my place, say, tomorrow at nineteen-hundred hours?” His words caught up to him and took a moment to process, leaving a slightly awkward gap between his first and last two sentences. “I’ll invite Naazt along, too. Might as well have all major departments involved.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Shannon said with a keen nod. “We should all bring something as well. I’ve got a bottle of Irish whiskey we can open.”


	2. Chapter 2

The clock above the stove read 18:53 when the door chime sounded.

“Come in!” Jeremy shouted from the kitchen, glancing over his shoulder as Jessica walked through the door, a large bottle in hand.

“I hope you like rum,” the raven-haired woman said, setting the bottle down on the table.

“I haven’t had the real stuff in ages, but I used to love it back in my Academy days.” He slid the tray of lasagna into the small oven tucked away in a small kitchenette near the replicator. As he turned back around, he untied the sauce-stained tan apron from around his waist and slipped it over his head, folding it up and setting it on the counter.

“So,” he said, gesturing toward the stove, “it’s in. I’m still working on my sauce, but this is the best one I’ve managed yet. Hopefully, it’s at least edible.”

“Well, someone’s certainly confident,” she teased. “Relax a bit, I’m sure it’s not _that_ bad.”

He laughed mockingly. “You say that, but you weren’t around for my first attempt. It was basically just tomatoes.”

The door chimed again, and once more, he called out for the person to enter. It was Shannon, and she was holding a full bottle of whiskey, as promised. She held it up as she walked into his quarters. “One bottle of fine Irish whiskey. I’ve been looking forward to opening this up.”

“Go ahead and set your drinks on the table,” he said, gesturing to a round glass-top dining table across the room. He’d requisitioned two extra chairs and a larger table. The latter, he realized, had been a good call. The previous table could have fit four chairs, but everyone would have been bumping elbows with their neighbor.

The two women set their bottles down and took a look around the room. Shannon wandered over to the wall of shelves containing numerous rock and mineral samples from around the galaxy. She leaned in to admire an iridescent stone with soft facets on its raw surface that reflected hues of yellow, crimson, and orange.

“This one looks like it has a fire burning inside it,” she said.

“Pick it up and hold it under the light. It’s one of my favorite samples.” Jeremy smiled, proud to show off his collection. “It’s from a Class K planet out near the border of Klingon space. Its closest Earth relative would be an opal.”

Jessica walked over to the shelves and stopped in front of a cluster of translucent white spires. “What about this one?”

“That is a type of quartz from a Class H planet from the middle of the Alpha Quadrant. If you look at the terminal faces, one of them has triangular markings on it where the crystal was starting to branch.”

The door chimed again, and Naazt entered after the three of them shouted for him to join them. He looked around the room as if inspecting the engineering decks.

“An interesting arrangement, Lieutenant.”

“I like to surround myself with my work in the most literal sense, Naazt,” Jeremy said, crossing the room to greet his final guest. “As long as you’re here, leave the rank at the door. We’re off duty.”

Naazt set two large bottles down on the table with a resounding thud. “So we are, Mister Caldwell, so we are. I must confess, I wasn’t sure about this proposal of yours.” The Tellarite sniffed pointedly toward the kitchen. “How is the... food?”

“It’s coming along, and it ought to be edible. I put it in shortly before the hour so we’d have some time before dinner.” Jeremy glanced at the alcoholic offerings on his dining table. “I’m beginning to think we have more to drink than we do to eat.”

“That’s never stopped anyone in my family,” Shannon said, placing the blazing gemstone gently back down on the shelf. “We usually had more to drink than we did to eat at our family gatherings.”

“Is that a challenge?” Jessica asked, opening the bottle of rum.

“It can be if you’d like,” Shannon said, walking over to the replicator to get a few glasses, “though I’d suggest putting in a request with sickbay ahead of time if you plan on trying to drink me under the table.”

Jeremy looked to Naazt. “I guess we’re having drinks before dinner. Pick your poison.”


	3. Chapter 3

“So, Jeremy,” Shannon said between bites of lasagna. “Why rocks?”

“Wow,” he said, coughing through the tail end of his bite of food. “Could you have made my specialization sound any more unimpressive?” Despite being a little on the salty side, dinner had turned out edible enough. A few other spices were slightly out of proportion, but what he had served his guests was distinctly lasagna in both appearance and texture. “I chose rocks because they’re easy to classify, interesting to study, and they tend to tie everything in the galaxy together in their own way. Sure, composition and formative conditions vary slightly from world to world, but gneiss is gneiss whether you find it on Earth or on Qo’noS.” He shrugged. “I suppose I’ve always taken solace in that fact. It makes the universe seem a whole lot smaller and less intimidating.”

He took another bite of his food and leaned back in his chair casually. “If we’re asking questions,” Jeremy continued, swallowing, “how’d you end up in command? I remember when we were first introduced, you said you used to sport blue.”

“I did,” Shannon said, taking a sip of water. “Frankly, I preferred it, and I’m still not entirely sure why they stuck me in command. My qualifications are kind of a stretch, though it’s a position you learn to sink or swim in pretty quickly.” She chuckled. “I miss my old uniform. Command Red clashes with my hair.”

Jeremy laughed with her, but couldn’t help but notice Jessica grimace before hiding her face with a long drink. He considered what he could say to brighten her mood when Naazt jumped in.

“Command is overrated, and for those who can’t be bothered to get their hands dirty. The _real_ work is down in engineering, where we keep this ship working no matter what ridiculous demands you make of it!”

“Well, we certainly would have a much harder time without you and your team, Naazt,” Jeremy offered cautiously. “I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to compare jobs. If we didn’t have a security team, we’d be in pretty bad shape, too.” He turned to look at Jessica, hoping to prompt some conversation from her silence. “Talking about work at the dinner table doesn’t seem to be doing anyone any favors. Why don’t we try something more lighthearted.” He took a drink from his glass of Irish whiskey, sucking his teeth as it burned its way down his throat. “Jessica, tell us something interesting about yourself.”

“About me?” she asked. “I don’t really know what to say. What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, “how about starting with where you’re from? We can go around the table if you’d like. That way, we’re all involved.”

“Well,” Jessica continued, “I grew up in Houston, on Earth. I bounced around from place to place for a while until I joined the Academy. How about you?”

“Houston,” Jeremy parroted with a grin, “I suppose that explains the request for brisket.” He helped himself to another bite of lasagna before it got too cold. “I’m from San Francisco. Attending the Academy was more an inevitability than anything for me. I wanted to go, but even if I hadn’t I probably would have ended up there one way or another.”

“You strike me as the kind of kid who collected meteorites and pebbles as a kid,” Shannon said, topping off her whiskey and offering to do the same for him.

“I mean, you’re not far off the mark. I did have a rock collection, but I got my first meteorite as a graduation present from my parents. It was a cross-cut of a metal-rich sample showing the intricate lattice structure of the grain. It was beautiful.”

Shannon snorted into her drink. “You’re the only person I’ve ever seen go misty-eyed while talking about space debris.”

Jeremy put on a playfully unamused face. “I don’t make fun of your hobbies now, do I? Enough dodging the question. You’re up next.”

“Kilkenny, Ireland. As if the accent and drink of choice don’t give it away.” She took a sip of her whiskey, downing it with ease. “Neither of my parents were part of Stafleet, but I insisted on joining. I think it was my father’s starship designs that got me thinking about it in the first place. If it wasn’t for those, I probably would have ended up studying archaeology alongside my mother. Not that anthropology is such a stretch from there if you think about it.”

“Your father designs starships?” Naazt asked, his curiosity piqued. “What type of ships does he work on?”

“Well, he mostly designs cargo ships and freighters,” she said, seemingly lost partly in thought. “I think he worked mostly on the autonomous designs.”

“Cargo vessels are the backbone of the Federation, Commander. At the end of the day, the real reason Starfleet is out here is to keep Federation space safe for them to travel. Without that, we wouldn’t be where we are today. No ships mean no supplies. No supplies mean no generator stations, which means no energy to run our ships. No energy means no replicators either, which would mean no raw ingredients for Mister Caldwell’s lasagna, and without _that_ , we would all be very disappointed.”

Jessica elbowed Naazt. “Hey now, I for one like a man who can cook.”

“So, I take it the lasagna is good then,” he said with a laugh, running a hand over the back of his neck.

“Yes, it’s good,” she replied, finishing her drink and reaching for the rum to top it back off. “It may be a bit salty, but it’s not replicator food, and that’s a welcome change.”

“You like a man who can cook, huh?” Shannon said, giving Jessica a prod before turning her attention to Jeremy, “learn to make a decent barbecue and you two might just be set.”

Jeremy shifted in his seat with a half-smile on his face. “I mean, it would probably take more tha-”

Jessica cut him off and turned toward Shannon with a wicked grin. “Yes, I like a man who can cook! Don’t you have any standards, Commander?”

Shannon coughed and set down her glass of whiskey. “Of course I have standards! I happen to like a man who can dance.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I find it very romantic and rather rare these days.” Unfolding one arm, she gestured to the room at large. “See? Standards.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” the other woman said, laughing both from the mood in the room and the rapidly depleting bottles of alcohol in the room. Turning away from Shannon, she faced Jeremy and Naazt on the other side of the table. “Okay you two, what is it you look for in someone?”

“Well,” Jeremy took a moment to think, “personality is always important. I like a woman who isn’t afraid to take control, if you know what I mean.” He took a sip of his water for a change and let the comment settle. “A sense of humor is nice, too, I suppose.”

Both women at the table raised their eyebrows in unison and exchanged a silent glance. Before either one could say anything, he bounced the question to Naazt. “What about you? Do you prefer wrenches or screwdrivers?”

Naazt paused as if to think on the question until everyone in the room was leaning in intently.

“He should have a well-trimmed beard.”

There was a moment of silence as the group considered his answer, during which Jeremy reached up and ran a hand over his own close-trimmed facial hair. “Huh. Not what I was expecting, but I can’t say I disagree with you. Personal hygiene is definitely important.”

“I’ll toast to that,” Shannon said, holding up her glass.

Jessica raised her glass as well. “And to all of us. Tonight was a good idea.”

Naazt smiled and clinked his glass noisily against theirs. “To new friendships.”

“And to new traditions,” Jeremy raised his glass as well. “Here’s to hoping we have more nights like this to come.”

  


**The adventures of the _USS Babel_ will continue...**


End file.
